The Glass Devil

forehead.”

Superintendent Andersson drummed his fingers on his desktop. Irene had just finished her account of her trip to London. They were reviewing the case in the afternoon, since morning prayers had been cut short because the superintendent had had to go to a superintendents’ meeting. With good reason, it could be assumed that this was one cause of his bad mood.

Another was that Jonny Blom had called in sick again. Since the unit was understaffed, if a single person was missing it was immediately felt. The ones who remained nearly collapsed under the requirements of the job. Work accumulated on their desks. Prioritizing was tough. It wasn’t easy explaining to the little old lady who had been threatened with a knife and robbed of a hundred and forty-three SEK, when she called for the seventh time in three days, that this investigation didn’t have the highest priority. For her, what had happened was a nightmare. For the police, it was yet another piece of paper on their desks. Maybe they would catch the culprit if there were further similar attacks in the area. If they were lucky, they might get a good description. If not, that report would just sink farther down under the pile of new cases.

“I actually think it provided us with a lot of new information. For example, I learned that Rebecka brought Christian Lefevre to Sweden last summer. They drove to Kullahult but never met her parents or brother. They drove up to Stockholm to discuss a job for Save the Children. Then they flew straight home to London again from Stockholm, without getting in touch with her parents,” said Irene.

“She never told her parents that they had been by the rectory?” Fredrik asked.

“I asked, and she said no.”

“What did they do for Save the Children?” Hannu wondered.

“No idea. That was the last question I was able to ask before she collapsed. Maybe we should contact Save the Children in Stockholm?”

“What the hell? They can’t have anything to do with the murders!” the superintendent exclaimed.

It really wasn’t one of his better days. Irene was overcome by a strong desire to send him over to Donna Thompson. Partly to get rid of him for a while, and partly because it probably would do him some good. But Donna would be disappointed. A pale and chubby bald superintendent with high blood pressure wasn’t what she had wished for. It was probably better for all involved if Andersson remained at the station in Goteborg.

“I know that it may be a dead end. But we don’t have any other leads, except for the computers, in this investigation. The only thing we know is that the computer screens were marked with bloody pentagrams. And that all the information on the hard drives was erased. Sten Schyttelius used computers. Jacob Schyttelius used computers. Rebecka works with computers at the highest level, as does Lefevre. The only one who didn’t have anything to do with computers was Elsa Schyttelius.”

“Where are the removable disks?” Hannu interjected.

“We haven’t found a single one,” Fredrik said.

“Exactly. There should be loads of them. Not least for backups,” Irene agreed.

“What exactly do Rebecka and that guy do?” Fredrik asked.

“Lefevre was communicative when I asked about their work. Apparently, most of it has to do with Internet security questions. How to stop sabotage and things like that.”

“What does that have to do with the murders?” the superintendent wanted to know.

“Perhaps nothing at all. But maybe it has to do with other things. When it comes to the Satanic lead, we’ve hit a dead end and can’t get any farther. What if Sten Schyttelius came across something completely different when he was searching for the Satanists? Something that was threatening enough to one or several people that they decided to kill him? That would explain why Elsa and Jacob were also killed. The murderer didn’t want to risk that Sten Schyttelius might have told the people closest to him about what he had found.”

It became quiet in the room. Eventually, Hannu said, “Then Rebecka is still in danger.”

“I’m afraid so. The murderer can’t know if Sten or Jacob had time to reveal anything to her. She seemed to feel a great deal of anguish and she was very frightened.”

“But why can’t the chick spit out what she knows?” Fredrik asked.

“Rebecka is a private person. Maybe she has no idea what it’s all about. Maybe she has a faint idea but doesn’t want to admit it to herself, suppressing everything that’s threatening. Maybe she’s in denial. I don’t know.”

“If the murderer took the time to destroy the hard drives, then he may have also destroyed the diskettes or removable disks. But maybe he still has them, so he can use the information they contain. Maybe they’re hidden somewhere in the area,” Fredrik suggested.

“Or they’re with the murderer,” Hannu added.

It would have been meaningless to destroy the hard drives and leave any removable disks. All the important information that was on the hard drives would also have been backed up, unless they had neglected this step. Had they? Not everyone was conscientious enough to back up their data.

“Could we have missed a place in the houses where you can hide discs or diskettes?” Irene asked, without much hope.

“Hardly. The houses have been gone over with a magnifying glass. Remember, the technicians found the hiding place behind the panel in the cottage,” Fredrik answered.

“The hiding place, yes. . Rebecka said that was used as a kind of safe. Who needs a safe in a cottage?” Irene asked.

“Maybe they feared a break-in. Break-ins at summer cottages are rising astronomically,” the superintendent muttered.

“But it wasn’t that far to the rectory. Why did they need a hiding place for important things at the cottage?” Irene persisted.

“Maybe he needed to hide the bottles from the wife,” Fredrik suggested.

“But according to Rebecka, everyone in the family knew about the hiding place.”

“What’s the guy like?” Hannu asked. A certain confusion arose until they concluded that he meant Christian Lefevre.

“A John Lennon lookalike who’s a thoughtful employer. He’s very worried about Rebecka. Overprotective. He’s tried to keep the police away from her. Having met Rebecka, I now understand him better. She really is in bad shape,” said Irene.

“Is it possible that she’s pretending to be sicker than she really is?” Andersson asked, with a hint of interest in his voice.

“No. She’s terribly ill. And Dr. Fischer told Gl. . Inspector Thompson that he had begun treating her for depression last fall. He seems to be a well-known doctor. Nice office.”

“And Lefevre and Rebecka don’t seem to have something going on?” Fredrik wondered.

“No. Not that I could tell.”

“Irene has to go back,” Hannu said, looking at the superintendent.

Andersson turned red. “That’s not possible. Do you know what it costs?”

“Rebecka holds the answer,” Hannu said.

“Possibly. But we’ll wait. She’s too damn sick to help us, according to Irene.”

Irene decided it was appropriate to break into the conversation. “I’ve spoken with the pastor at the Swedish Seaman’s Church in London. He promised to get in touch when Rebecka improves.”

“Then we wait until then,” Andersson concluded.

IT TOOK quite a while before Irene managed to get ahold of the right person. The one who had been most involved in the investigation was on Easter vacation in Idre but after a good deal of wandering about the telephone exchange, she was able to speak with an officer named Lisa Sandberg. Irene introduced herself and explained the reason for her call.

“My question, then, is what kind of work Rebecka Schyttelius and Christian Lefevre did for you at Save the Children.”

“It’s no secret from the police, even if I don’t want you to spread it around. There are probably a lot of people who would like to see Schyttelius’s and Lefevre’s heads on a platter,” Lisa Sandberg said seriously.

“The information will remain confidential. Only the investigation team will learn of it,” Irene assured her.

“Okay. What happened was that, out of sheer luck, we received a tip about a network of pedophiles who